Whats on your iPod? Memphis Music, I have to stay true to my roots, and the Stones

Pet peeve: E-mail overkill

Greatest achievement: The last year has been pretty good.

Greatest disappointment: Im sure it hasnt happened yet.

Fantasy job: Pretty much anything on the beach

Executive you most admire: Anyone who actually makes a decent living on the beach

Business advice: Listen you cant learn anything when youre talking.

AÂ few years ago, Mike McCarley approached his
boss, Dick Ebersol, and told him that he was thinking about leaving NBC and
going to business school. Ebersol frowned and said, “Stay here and get your MBA
from me.”

Mike McCarleyNBC Universal
Sports & Olympics

“I knew immediately from his
frown that he thought that was a bad idea,” McCarley recalled.

True to his word, Ebersol
promoted McCarley in August 2006, giving the executive oversight of the
network’s sports advertising and promotion department.

McCarley responded with
advertising and marketing campaigns unlike anything NBC had ever tried before,
such as his “Sunday night is football night” tag line for “Sunday Night
Football.”

“That’s an approach that we had
never come close to doing before, to create a brand that was an integral part
of the American mosaic,” said NBC Sports President Ken Schanzer. “There’s a
palpable difference between what we were doing in the past and what we’re doing
today. ... That’s largely through his enterprise.”

McCarley has been NBC Sports’
point person in spreading the division’s message across both NBC’s media
properties and external advertisers.

For both the Olympics and the
Super Bowl, that meant getting buy-in from NBC properties as diverse as MSNBC,
Oxygen and “Access Hollywood,” and advertisers such as 7-Eleven and
Anheuser-Busch.

NBC executives are convinced
that this outreach brought more casual fans to both big events, which, in turn,
led to record numbers of women viewers.

“Our promotion has to go to
these casual fans and give them a reason to watch, and that’s what’s going to
grow the audience,” McCarley said.